Tagged: wish

Love is not always the happily-ever-after that we think it is. We would surely have moments of disappointments, anger, irritation, and whole lot more different (and negative) emotions when we love a person. But these negative feelings sometimes stem from our own wishes and expectations from life. When we begin to weave dreams and wishes for what we thought was love, and then things don’t happen the way we envisioned it to be, that’s when we feel disappointments. Disappointments because something or someone did not live up to a certain standards. Then we start to beat ourselves up emotionally, wondering what just happened, what we did wrong, what should we do next. Or we find someone to blame for these disappointments.

I’d seen a romantic-comedy movie recently about a guy who was deemed “unloveable” because of his problematic personality. Portrayed to be someone who wanted to prove to his family that he was a capable leader for the company, the guy is mean and extremely strict towards his employees, and sometimes doesn’t realize how much he has hurt other people’s feelings. Later in the story, the guy is revealed to be the illegitimate youngest son of the company owner, and the reason that he is so driven to succeed is because he just wanted to be accepted by his half-siblings. The guy wanted to please his family, thinking that was the only way to “deserve” their love. And when the project he was handling fell through, he distanced himself from the girl who loves him (even though he had developed feelings for her). He told her to have pity on herself, because she will only get tired of hoping, wishing, and waiting for the love to be returned. As the guy said it, I couldn’t help but realize that his words mainly referred to the guy’s hope of being accepted by his father’s family. He was seeking for an affirmation of love, and upon finding none, decided to give up altogether.

I think experiencing negative emotions is inevitable for everyone; there’s no such thing as a “perfect” life. But how we react to the struggles and sufferings we face is what we can control. We have the choice to approach these negative emotions in either an optimistic or pessimistic manner. When we treat these struggles in a positive manner, we can think of them as a challenge meant to make us stronger. It is when we find ourselves vulnerable that we learn to discover our limitations and work with that. Sometimes we just need to find our motivation to live—something to keep us going when things get tough. For the guy in the movie, his motivation was to get his family to accept him. But when he made the decision to give up the fight (for his job and employees), he also lost the one person who accepted and loved him despite being “unloveable.”

So whenever you think that you don’t “deserve” love, think about the people you know (family, friends, colleagues, even remote acquaintances). There’s bound to be at least one who care about you and what you do. If things get tough, remember that it’s much better to continue the fight (even if it’s hard) than to give up so easily, because you’ll never know when things will suddenly look up and get better. When you give up, you lose your opportunity to change things.